That threat is the possible change in policies for US ISPs that currently allow for unlimited downloads from their services. According to an AP story (via Yahoo) one of the biggest ISPs, Time Warner Cable, is currently testing a new plan in Beaumont, Texas for its new customers that will limit how much bandwidth they can access for its Internet use. The plan is to charge customers an extra $1 per gigabyte after they go over a pre-selected limit.

Time Warner Cable claims that just 5 percent of its customers take up half of their bandwidth so limiting Internet use is trying to play fair to the rest of its customers. However, as the article points out, most customers are unaware of how much they do download per month. Also, the Internet is being touted by people like Valve and others as the savior of the PC game industry via game downloads, some of which are several gigabytes in size (and patches are getting larger as well). Limiting Internet use could likely curtail customers who want to download games and other large multimedia files. If Time Warner Cable feels this test is successful you can bet that other ISPs will begin their own similar programs. Will the PC game industry try to fight the ISPs on this matter? Stay tuned.